The Death of Capitalism?

[Tunnelcat]

Most of you here equate Capitalism with Freedom and the American Way. So is Capitalism beginning to ROT from within?

[null0010]

http://www.cracked.com/article_18817_5- ... -b.s..html

[Grendel]

That idealized capitalism died in the 50's. Funny how many people think it's still there.

[Lothar]

Capitalism and economic freedom are fairly intertwined, thought not exactly the same thing.

The American Way is something altogether different, largely due to politicians wanting to get their cut from businesses and giving favorable economic deals to certain industries or companies.

[AlphaDoG]

WOW! I agree with Grendel. Truth, Justice, and, the American way, went back to Krypton with Kal-El!

[Spidey]

Before you go and write off capitalism, you might want to wait and see what happens to socialism in Europe.

[Will Robinson]

Most of you here equate Capitalism with Freedom and the American Way. So is Capitalism beginning to ROT from within?

I don't see how your article is reason to dismiss capitalism or that it proves freedom and capitalism are mutually exclusive. I could show you articles on how automobile accidents are more deadly when manufacturers cut corners on installed safety devices but it wouldn't show that automobiles are bad and it wouldn't prove that automobiles are not a good form of personal transportation.

[woodchip]

Riddle me this...if capitalism dies, where will the govt. get it's taxes from?

[Avder]

Riddle me this...if capitalism dies, where will the govt. get it's taxes from?

The ultrarich who have all the money will pay and set up their own little private country clubs while they let the rest of the unwashed masses fight it out in a global anarchy.

[Tunnelcat]

Well, let's see. The top 1% of U.S. households earned MORE income than the BOTTOM 120 MILLION American unwashed masses! No longer Capitalism, but we're sure headed towards Oligarchy.

[Will Robinson]

Well, let's see. The top 1% of U.S. households earned MORE income than the BOTTOM 120 MILLION American unwashed masses! No longer Capitalism, but we're sure headed towards Oligarchy.

I think you phrased that wrong because it says that the small number of rich earn more than the majority of the poor. That seems to be a likely outcome when comparing rich to poor.
Did you mean to say that each of the richest 1% of american families earn more than the total income of the bottom 120 million families combined?

If so what is the level of income of those poor families relative to the average? Since it is normal for the rich to be few in numbers and the lower earners to be the majority it really doesn't matter if a few people have 10 buildings full of cash or 10,000 as long as the poor have a decent supply themselves. That could easily be a capitalist system result. especially if you have a government that sponsors families to stay out of work...

[Heretic]

Well, let's see. The top 1% of U.S. households earned MORE income than the BOTTOM 120 MILLION American unwashed masses! No longer Capitalism, but we're sure headed towards Oligarchy.

Don't forget that the people in the top 1% are the ones you vote for.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_class#US_models

[Isaac]

*isaac executes random graph jitsu:

[Spidey]

You have to love spin, that way you can say things like…

“Not raising taxes causes deficits”.

[snoopy]

I think there's a point at which the capitalism mechanism starts to break down with increasing company size. Also, increasing technology hurts capitalism, because it makes it ever more expensive to start.

Any people study economy enough to confirm/refute those two theories?

[Isaac]

I think there's a point at which the capitalism mechanism starts to break down with increasing company size. Also, increasing technology hurts capitalism, because it makes it ever more expensive to start.

Any people study economy enough to confirm/refute those two theories?

Me, but I are nube.

edited out stupid reply, though the next part is still relevant:
Also, advancements in technology generally increases the "production possibilities frontier" curve, which can put us in a recessionary gap as the "long run aggregate supply curve" is pushed to the right. However, demand or supply should adjust, or be adjusted, to meet this curve.

[Isaac]

So, no and no.

[dissent]

Most of you here equate Capitalism with Freedom and the American Way. So is Capitalism beginning to ROT from within?

I don't get it. De Soto's book is The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else. If capitalism is triumphing, how does this proclaim the death of capitalism? Oh, and once again I love how the fact that government policy was instrumental in fomenting the housing crisis is relatively ignored in the rush to dump on the banks and mortgage industry.

Bill Whittle on Wealth Creation

[Lothar]

the capitalism mechanism starts to break down with increasing company size.

Only once you get to near-monopoly status and have a nice cash reserve, this is true. At that point, you can afford to undercut any competitor entering your space for long enough to bankrupt them. This allows you to undercut a key pillar of capitalism, which is competition for customers. But these cases are exceedingly rare.

More commonly, the capitalist system will break down because some company is in bed with lawmakers. Typically this comes from large companies, but the problem isn't the size of the company, it's the ability of the company to use lawmakers and regulators in order to give itself an advantage over competitors.

increasing technology hurts capitalism, because it makes it ever more expensive to start.

This depends on the field.

In many heavily regulated fields, this is true -- there are a lot of unnecessary expenses that a "truly capitalist" company would deal with in more efficient ways. For example, much of the health care / health insurance field is so encrusted in regulation that it's very difficult for new companies to move into the market. This ties back in to the above point: regulations that distort the market mean capitalism isn't producing solutions as good as should be produced.

In other fields, though, increasing technology makes it easier to enter. How hard was it to write software in 1970 vs today? A lot of people nowadays start businesses using nothing but their PC and a little bit of web space.

[Grendel]

Only once you get to near-monopoly status and have a nice cash reserve, this is true. At that point, you can afford to undercut any competitor entering your space for long enough to bankrupt them. This allows you to undercut a key pillar of capitalism, which is competition for customers. But these cases are exceedingly rare.

Most competition is simply bought out by the big fish AFICT. May be in the form of a "joint venture" (or similar) as well.

More commonly, the capitalist system will break down because some company is in bed with lawmakers. Typically this comes from large companies, but the problem isn't the size of the company, it's the ability of the company to use lawmakers and regulators in order to give itself an advantage over competitors.

Advantage over the competition is a bit narrow, I'd phrase that as "advantage in form of deregulation". And the size of a corp is fairly proportional to its monetary power, ie. ability to lobby. Smaller corps will trow their lobby money into a pot to gain the leverage as an industry.

In other fields, though, increasing technology makes it easier to enter. How hard was it to write software in 1970 vs today? A lot of people nowadays start businesses using nothing but their PC and a little bit of web space.

Uh, it was very easy in the 70s compared to today, you should know that. Ask your wife And the businesses that are started are small, if they grow beyond a certain size, guess what, they are swallowed by the big players again.

I'm not commenting on your health care example, trying to keep the thread on track

The "american dream" is pretty dead. You can only become a multi-millionaere by:

1. be born into it
2. invent a new industry
3. play lotto
4. build up a business and sell it. Rinse, repeat.

[Lothar]

I'd phrase that as "advantage in form of deregulation"

Deregulation can provide an unfair advantage is when a company essentially inherits infrastructure, technology, or capital from the government.

Regulation can also provide unfair advantages to existing companies in the form of high barriers to entry into a market, or expensive "busy work" type requirements that kill margins for companies that aren't big enough to have a dedicated legal staff. (My health care example is dead on here. My awesomer-than-words-can-describe health care, through a place called Qliance, is impossible to get in many states because direct primary care practices get classified as insurance, and therefore must provide more than just primary care. This makes them prohibitively expensive to operate.)

Note that I'm not "anti-regulation" per se; I'm anti-burdensome-and-pointless regulation. Regulations forcing transparency, honoring contracts, etc. are good, and tend to contribute to efficient markets.

How hard was it to write software in 1970 vs today? A lot of people nowadays start businesses using nothing but their PC and a little bit of web space.

Uh, it was very easy in the 70s compared to today, you should know that. Ask your wife :P

It was easy to write software in the 70s, provided you had access to tens of thousands of dollars worth of hardware, and your software did the sort of thing you can do on 1970s hardware, and by "easy" you mean "time consuming". Often, the code you took 3 weeks to write in 1970 could be rewritten in an afternoon in a modern language like Ruby or Haskell or even a semi-old language like Perl.

Nowadays, you can develop useful applications on a home PC you spent less than $500 on, that you can sell to a huge market of smartphone users worldwide. You have access to good IDEs, libraries, powerful languages, and other development tools that simply didn't exist in the 70s. You can simply churn out much more capability, and much more revenue potential, for the same effort now than you could then.

The "american dream" is pretty dead. You can only become a multi-millionaere by:

1. be born into it
2. invent a new industry
3. play lotto
4. build up a business and sell it. Rinse, repeat.

I know several multi-millionaires who don't meet any of those, who simply held a pretty good job for 3+ decades and saved and invested a good portion of their income, or who built a simple and successful business and kept it.

The "american dream" isn't dead. It's just not as easy as Hollywood tells you it used to be.

[Grendel]

Note that I'm not "anti-regulation" per se; I'm anti-burdensome-and-pointless regulation. Regulations forcing transparency, honoring contracts, etc. are good, and tend to contribute to efficient markets.

Add regulation to protect the consumer and environment and we are on the same page.

It was easy to write software in the 70s, provided you had access to tens of thousands of dollars worth of hardware, and your software did the sort of thing you can do on 1970s hardware, and by "easy" you mean "time consuming".

No, I mean "easy" in the sense. 70s hardware and OSs were way less complex than they are today.

Nowadays, you can develop useful applications on a home PC you spent less than $500 on, that you can sell to a huge market of smartphone users worldwide. You have access to good IDEs, libraries, powerful languages, and other development tools that simply didn't exist in the 70s. You can simply churn out much more capability, and much more revenue potential, for the same effort now than you could then.

After you spend quite some time and resources to learn the languages, hardware, and aquire these tools. If it where that easy nobody would have to buy any software anymore, you could just write it Professional software engineering is at least as expensive today as it was in the 70s.

I know several multi-millionaires who don't meet any of those, who simply held a pretty good job for 3+ decades and saved and invested a good portion of their income, or who built a simple and successful business and kept it.

And you think that's still possible if you start today ?

[dissent]

I know several multi-millionaires who don't meet any of those, who simply held a pretty good job for 3+ decades and saved and invested a good portion of their income, or who built a simple and successful business and kept it.

And you think that's still possible if you start today ?

Yeah.

The Millionaire Next Door

[Lothar]

Add regulation to protect the consumer and environment and we are on the same page.

Sure, but only if it's actually effective at accomplishing those goals. Just having the words "consumer protection" or "environmental protection" in the title isn't enough to ensure the regulation is actually good at protecting either consumers or the environment.

I know several multi-millionaires who don't meet any of those, who simply held a pretty good job for 3+ decades and saved and invested a good portion of their income, or who built a simple and successful business and kept it.

And you think that's still possible if you start today ?

Yes, if it's the direction you choose to go in life.

[Drakona]

In other fields, though, increasing technology makes it easier to enter. How hard was it to write software in 1970 vs today? A lot of people nowadays start businesses using nothing but their PC and a little bit of web space.

Uh, it was very easy in the 70s compared to today, you should know that. Ask your wife

So . . . Tom did ask me that. Specifically, "Would you say it's harder to program today or in the 1970s?"

My initial response was that it's not really harder or easier, it's just different. We're solving much harder problems today, but we also have much better tools. It really depends on what you're working on; you can find hard and easy things to do in all ages. It's certainly a much bigger field than it was in the 70's, but in some areas we're still doing similar things with similar tools. So I'd say the profession is similarly challenging.

But that's if you want to know how hard it is to be a programmer. Which is not really what you want to know.

On the flip side, how hard is it to solve a given problem? Zillions of times easier these days. Teenagers experimenting with scripts and massive frameworks can do things now that high budget teams of professional engineers would have found infeasible in the 70's. The 80's and 90's saw the advent and proliferation of scripting languages, which are well-known productivity boosters; back in the 70's, you'd have been stuck with something structured like C.

On the other hand, in the 70's, creating something like a text-based single-platform operating system that requires a professional to babysit it at all times? Acceptable. We're solving harder problems now. Even if you could do that faster these days (and you totally could), nobody would want it.

Fred Brooks, in his landmark book on the nature of software engineering "The Mythical Man-Month" (1975), distinguised between two types of difficulties encountered in software engineering: accidental difficulties and intrinsic difficulties. Accidental difficulties are things that make the work hard, but which could be removed. Things like working with limited memory in hardware, lack of access to high level languages, dropping one's punch cards on the floor. Intrinsic difficulties, on the other hand, are part of the problem and always will be. In order to create a given application, you need to understand what it has to do completely and correctly, and no tool can ever save you from that.

When the book was written (and in a later essay), Brooks saw the industry at a turning point. Up until that time, accidental difficulties dominated. But as time has gone on, we've removed accidental difficulty after accidental difficulty; at the time he was writing, he estimated that intrinsic difficulties account for about 90% of the effort in software engineering.

I would agree with his assessment, and say things have only gotten better. Accidental difficulties are of vanishing effect these days. There is very little that stands between the programmer and what he wants to do; the tools and documentation and expertise and libraries are at one's fingertips. Imagine a web app and you can deploy it that afternoon.

Software Engineering is also better understood these days. In the 70's it was common for engineers to work in wide open bays, tens of people side by side. Nowadays, programmers demand quiet for concentration. Add in the availability of fast hardware for incremental testing (you used to have one run per day; you'd better look for all the errors you could!), really potent high level languages, and the google factor, and you have a much easier time solving any given problem.

But that wasn't really the question either.

The question really was, how hard is it to enter the software business? Is it easier today or harder than it was?

And the answer to that one is easy: it's totally easier.

Consider the differences between the power players of different eras. In the 1960's or so, the industry was dominated by the likes of Xerox and IBM. Software came bundled with hardware, machines were massive and tempermental. Only business could afford them, and only established companies (Xerox didn't start as a software company) could afford to develop software and enter the field.

By the 70's and 80's, the rise of Microsoft was a more typical story. A couple computer enthusiasts could start a company with a minimal product, developed with personal assets (and that is indeed how Microsoft started). To grow big, though, companies depended on deals with established players (Microsoft's famous deal with IBM to distribute DOS, for examle). Large investments in hardware and money were still needed to be truly competitive, and that continued through the dot com era. Amazon(1994) is a typical example -- arising from the dream and passion of one man, it asked for multiple millions from investors before turning a profit. Google (1996) is also typical of the era, starting as a PhD research product, but going through $25 million in funding (and then an IPO) on its path to industry dominance.

Companies in modern era look like Facebook (2004) -- web applications developed quickly and profitable early, with the major hurdle between nothing and world dominance being the brilliance of the idea, the execution of the founders, and their living expenses while putting the thing together.

And the barriers to entry are still coming down.

Paul Graham, at one of the epicenters of the Silicon Valley investment scene, wrote in 2010 about the changing landscape ( http://www.paulgraham.com/superangels.html ). The major pattern? Companies were asking for less money. Some got off the ground with $10,000. Some asked for $250,000. $1M+ investments were getting rarer, so the firms used to making those sorts of deals were having to look at smaller deals in order to compete.

Nowadays just nothing stands between the brilliant software entepreneur and his millions. A software product can be developed as a personal project with hardware and software easily available to the common man. Teenagers write profoundly profitable iphone apps. The barrier to entry for that? A PC and a $100 developer account. Profitable web apps can start as a summer project. Personal projects, developed by enthusiasts for almost nothing and published on the web practically for free? Can net millions. http://www.develop-online.net/news/3597 ... 350k-a-day

That's not to say making money is easy. The barriers to entry are so low that everyone tries it, and you're swimming in a damn shark tank out there. It's hard to be right, and it's hard to get noticed. But if you're good and tough and maybe a bit lucky, the software industry is an easier place to make it than it's ever been.

[Grendel]

Still disagree; Altho admittedly my view is skewed by the particular niche I write software in (OS's, real time systems & process control.) -- in my eyes Stuxnet is a program, an iPhone app is a script at best (also I havn't seen anybody getting rich w/ an iPhone app yet except Apple. Maybe possible tho.)

Markus Persson is the exception you always find, but he's not representative for \"how easy it is\", he invested a good chunk of resources to get where he is. And he had the luck necessary

[Sidenote] \"He also claims to have turned down job offers from the likes of Valve and Bungie.\" -- which is what always happens to good programmers, corps try to get them. Another hurdle to become independent. http://notch.tumblr.com/post/1096322756 ... qus_thread[/sidenote]

Yes, todays tools are more sophisticated, but the learning curves to use these tool efficently are steeper as well -- just try to debug an windows application in real time. You need a large amount of highly specialized knowledge in order to do that. And idealy a subscription to MSDN, not cheap esp. if you are a young, starving, and ambitioned programmer.

Sure, everybody can potentially \"program\" but only a few can write sellable software than makes profit. So yes, you can start a business writing your own software but I don't think it's easier today than it was 20 or 30 years ago, the hurdles just shifted. Increased competition and increased amount of background knowledge required makes it actually harder IMHO. In order to be competitive you have to really stand out (and spend even more resources to be able to.)

Edit: I would put Amazon, Google, and more recent Facbook under my \"invent a new industry\" criteria BTW. You don't have to be a programmer to do that, you just need to find one. This is also how it mostly works, lone wulfs that do-it-all from concept to product and are successful like Persson are the lone exception. \"Possible to become rich\" doesn't mean \"probable to become rich\", something most people seem to push aside.

[Drakona]

Still disagree; Altho admittedly my view is skewed by the particular niche I write software in (OS's, real time systems & process control.) -- in my eyes Stuxnet is a program, an iPhone app is a script at best.

Well, you're certainly entitled to your opinion. But iPhone apps are definitely real software in the conventional sense. I mean, they're written in Objective C and have servers and databases and GUIs and all that. They're not typically *big* pieces of software that take a lot of people and resources to develop, but if that's how you define "software" then "hard to enter the industry" is going to be a given.

But I mean, even if we're talking about embedded software or hardware hacking . . . we live in an age with Ardruinos, for crying out loud. It couldn't possibly be easier to get started than that.

(also I havn't seen anybody getting rich w/ an iPhone app yet except Apple. Maybe possible tho.)

I think that's indicative that you don't really follow that part of the industry. At the high end, you have programs like "Angry Birds" -- a product of hundreds of thousands of dollars of intensive customer research, with 7 million paid downloads. At the low end, you have 12 year old kids goofing around who pull in thousands of dollars ( http://blog.appboy.com/2010/05/the_futu ... phone_dev/ ) At the middle end, you have personal projects like Trainyard that -- after a great deal of entepreneurial perspiration -- pay off. ( http://struct.ca/2010/the-story-so-far/ )

Of course, you have a lot of people who try their hand at it and get nothing. Let's not confuse the two senses of the word 'easy' here. There's "easy to get into" and "easy to succeed at". Nothing is easy to succeed at. Business is hard. Making things is hard. A lot of people would love to write a novel, but once anyone sits down to do it, they discover how hard it is just to write something at all. The selling, editing, publishing process is nothing a normal person can't navigate with a lot of blood, sweat, and tears -- but that's just what most people don't want to put in. Software entepreneurship is the same way. A lot of people would like to write something cool and sell it online, but the difficulty of developing and polishing and marketing a good product? Nothing a normal person can't do, except that it's hard.

But it's easy in terms of the resources required to try.

Different industries are different. You can't start an insurance company without millions of dollars in the bank. You can't start an aerospace company without tens of millions. Nobody but an established corporation or someone with really aggressive investors would even try to start a biotech company. But some industries are easy. Blogging? You need a brilliant idea and an internet connection. If you're good, you can quit your day job, and if you're great, you can get rich. Software? Compiler and internet connection. And one of those is free.

Markus Persson is the exception you always find, but he's not representative for "how easy it is", he invested a good chunk of resources to get where he is. And he had the luck necessary

Well . . . not to be insulting, but I think that's also indicative that you don't really follow the industry. I suggest you spend a few hours with wikipedia and learn how the big software companies and products of today started. There are a few common themes -- "big corporation makes massive investment in huge new product" is one of them. But "a couple dudes with nothing but a bright idea, a compiler, an internet connection, and a 3 month supply of ramen" is another. But so that you can see I'm not entirely blowing smoke, I'll give you three more examples.

Narbuncular Drop: CS student senior project -- four guys, I think? Published on the web. Acquired by Vavle. Became Portal. They're rich now.

Chatroulette: High school student invests a couple days in building a website. Gets $10,000 investment from parents as site grows. Hits world news. I think he still owns it, but I remember he turned down a $90M offer, so that tells you something.

Blizzard: Founded in 1991 by three freshly-minted college grads. Made mods and ports of existing games. Acquired (== founders rich now) while releasing Warcraft. Made Starcraft. Made Starcraft II. 20 years later, industry behemoth.

For successful software companies these days, stories like these are not the exception. They are the rule.

Yes, todays tools are more sophisticated, but the learning curves to use these tool efficently are steeper as well -- just try to debug an windows application in real time. You need a large amount of highly specialized knowledge in order to do that. And idealy a subscription to MSDN, not cheap esp. if you are a young, starving, and ambitioned programmer.

I think the harder problems we are working on today are more than offset by the greater resources we have. I mean, you talk about specialized knowledge, but how do you get that today? Google, dev accounts, dev forums, O'reilly books. How did you get that in 1970? Well, if you were lucky, you studied under a local wizard. But if you were the local wizard, you had The Big Gray Wall.

I think today's world is far easier in sum, and I offer the following proof: college students (and occasionally high school students) are doing it.

Who was doing the hacking on innovative new software products in the 1970's? Quick comparison -- Unix (1970's) was written in by professional programmers working at AT&T Bell Labs as their day job. Linux (1990's) -- initially written by a grad student working solo while still in grad school, extended by programmers of all types in their free time.

"Possible to become rich" doesn't mean "probable to become rich", something most people seem to push aside.

Agreed wholeheartedly. I am in no way arguing that it's easy. It's hard. But I am arguing that anyone can do it. Regardless of how much money or resources you have, software is an industry in which a poor guy willing to work hard to achieve a bright idea can make it BIG.

[Grendel]

Yes, you are right, I'm following the industry in a myopic fashion -- I'm more interested in the iPhone OS than the apps eg. I'll promise to change that as time allows

You are right with your points but each has more to it.

- most products today start as a team effort. Being a general-purpose developer today is way harder than it was a few decades back.

- Narbuncular Drop: good example for how individuals get sucked up by corps. Sometimes that backfires, Deep6 eg. died a quick death that way (really a shame, the game was almost in beta, had stunning looks and a very close to D3 feel.) They certainly do have an income now. Nothing left of their business' tho.

- Chatroulette: didn't look at it in detail. Always thought it's one of the "hip for 10min" sites.

- Blizzard: another good example. Founded in the early 90s, were I think it was easier. Now they hog the market they invented, making it really hard for other people to get in.

For successful software companies these days, stories like these are not the exception. They are the rule.

Why, else they wouldn't be successful . For each of these there are countless endavors that failed despite having brilliant ideas and talent behind them.

- Yes we have more resources. But the offset is only partial, you still have to wade through more information than ever before. Also the signal-to-noise ratio in that info went down quite a bit.

- At least college students have always been "doing it". It's where most of the technology originated from.

- Nothing too innovative about the Linux kernel. Linus got annoyed at Minix and started writing his own. It very quickly became a team effort. Not that hard actually, esp. if you have access to the Minix source as an example. And he didn't get rich w/ it either, it's released under GNU license.

I am in no way arguing that it's easy. It's hard. But I am arguing that anyone can do it. Regardless of how much money or resources you have, software is an industry in which a poor guy willing to work hard to achieve a bright idea can make it BIG.

Why yes, that's why I think it was easier to do up to about the early 90s (That and a few other things -- hey, Asteroids runs from 8kBs of ROM !)

Probably shouldn't derail the thread further, if interested we could chat about it on vent.

[LEON]

Riddle me this...if capitalism dies, where will the govt. get it's taxes from?

"The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money" Margret Thatcher

[Mjolnir]

Extremes will never work, and we've been heading to an extreme form of capitalism. Moderation is the key of life.

[Stroodles]

Extremes will never work, and we've been heading to an extreme form of capitalism. Moderation is the key of life.

We have?

[Mjolnir]

We have?

Yes. You haven't noticed?

[Isaac]

We have?

Yes. You haven't noticed?

You're implying that local, state, and federal jobs have decreased in the last five years?

[woodchip]

Average govt wage has now surpassed the private sector:

\"Federal civil servants earned average pay and benefits of $123,049 in 2009 while private workers made $61,051 in total compensation, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. The data are the latest available.\"

The taxation on corp. will be one of highest in the world:

\"But with a corporate tax rate of 39.2 percent (when combining state and federal taxes), the United States would find itself taxing businesses more than any of the other nations in the organization. Economists say that high corporate tax rates will do little but drive business and investment out of the United States.\"

Japan had a very high corp tax but:

\"Japan’s freshly minted prime minister announced last week that his new government would reduce Japan’s corporate tax rate, now the highest in the world among major industrialized nations, leaving the United States as the world leader in corporate taxation.

“Japan’s economy has basically been in a slump for the past 20 years and people have been overwhelmed by a sense of stagnation,” Japan’s Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Masayuki Naoshima told Agence France Presse, a wire service. “It is now the time to decide (on cutting corporate tax) for the sake of future economic vitality, employment and securing increased tax revenues\"

So once again Mjolnir, you spout the liberal line of bullpucky without really looking into what you are parroting. We have been diving towards the socialist extreme and not the corporate extreme for a while now.

[Ferno]

You'll end up liking socialism there woody. All they need to do is tell you how it benefits you.

*cough* auto insurance for example.



but you also forget that US corporations have about sixteen ways around the so-called high taxation.

for example:
from the 15k mark to the 18.3k mark, the tax rate actually drops from 38% to 35%. but if they file for the Alternative minimum tax, it goes down to 20%. So a person making about 50K a year ends up paying more tax than a corporation that uses the AMT.

highest in the world? I'm sorry, but no.

[Mjolnir]

First off... that panda picture is ★■◆●ing awesome.

Besides Fernos obvious point of the tax evasions going on(maybe something to do with why it's so high?) your facts about the Government worker having a more stable job and pay only reinforces what I've said. Jobs are being shipped over seas and the jobs that stay here, people are being paid less and asked to work more and harder while the CEO at the tippy top gets huge bonuses. Our banks right now are literally sitting on -trillions- of dollars and instead of investing it back into the communities(especially the ones helped out by our freakin tax dollars) they are gambling it away on Wall Street, which has become the epitome of the American economy thanks to this move to an extreme capitalism.

We now have an environment based on short term, ★■◆● everyone else profit as opposed to investment in this country. If you don't see an dangerous, extreme capitalism in that, then this place really is going to go to hell and you may welcome your oligarchy with open arms I guess.

[Krom]

you may welcome your oligarchy with open arms I guess.

Well I'm not opposed to welcoming them with "arms", but I don't think "open" ones are quite what we should have in mind.

[Ferno]

Have you thought of the \"caliber\" of the speech you want to deliver?

[Tunnelcat]

You mean the oligarchy that was consummated under Nixon and born under Reagan and fostered by Republicans (and Corporatist Democrats) policies thereafter?

Here's an example of why I won't EVER vote for any Republican, Blue Dog ConservaDem or Corporatist (any party) ever again. A slight tinge of socialism needs to make a comeback in the U.S.

Deadly Food

[woodchip]

You'll end up liking socialism there woody. All they need to do is tell you how it benefits you.

*cough* auto insurance for example.



but you also forget that US corporations have about sixteen ways around the so-called high taxation.

for example:
from the 15k mark to the 18.3k mark, the tax rate actually drops from 38% to 35%. but if they file for the Alternative minimum tax, it goes down to 20%. So a person making about 50K a year ends up paying more tax than a corporation that uses the AMT.

highest in the world? I'm sorry, but no.

Heh..a corp. earning 18k a year is not exactly the size of the evil corporation TC loves so much. Also remember that all those foreign corporations have write offs too. Point is, on average the US is one of the highest taxed places to do business. If you are going to counter point at least produce something beside hyperbole.